Time for a few links from Gameshark which are worth checking out.
We have my review of MLB 11 The Show on the PS3. (B+)
Barnes offers great piece of criticism on Fantasy Flight’s Mansions of Madness.
Previews of L.A. Noire (linked here a few days ago) as well as a preview of the multiplayer mode called F**king Run in Fear 3. (I refuse to call that game F3ar).
Barnes also checks out the just released Warriors: Legends of Troy which is about as good as you think it is.
And finally Brian Rowe reviews a game I will never play because I hate hard games: Hard Corps Uprising .
Tomorrow, we’re running Todd’s Q&A with the developer of the new Mount & Blade game, which I’ll link on Friday, along with Tom’s Homefront review.
Wow, great review of Mansions of Madness, Barnes. You’ve managed to give me pause; it seems like one of those FFG games that won’t really be feature complete until the first expansion hits…always frustrating for such an expensive game, but if they manage to fix some of your complaints here I’ll still bite. Just not quite as soon as I had planned.
Five scenarios sounds like way, way too few. That is ultimately the deal-breaker for me. The only other FFG adventure game I can recall with less than half a dozen adventures was DOOM, and while that was a ton of fun, it ended up on the bottom of my closet in no time. I don’t think they’ll ever bring the expansion for that one back, either (not even sure they still have the license), and they clearly have no intention to support it further.
I will wait for the inevitable “how the MoM expansion fixes everything” follow-up. Then I’ll think about adding it to my collection. I’m planning on dropping Descent on my group in the next few weeks, and I’m still not sure how the adversarial “DM” is going to go over. If that’s a bomb, this might be a good substitute. On the other hand, I always found playing Zargon in Hero Quest an awfully frustrating experience…either let me kill them or give me more options! I always felt hamstrung.
On the up side, this frees up cash to snag BSG and possibly even Innovation next month…hooray! They sound like much better buys at the moment.
I agree it’s a good review, but it’s made me even keener to pick the thing up. My group is a roleplaying group first and foremost, so it feels like it’ll work well for us played occasionally between expansions.
The five scenarios all have three separate variables picked by the keeper, so the whole thing has many permutations, just in case that wasn’t perfectly clear. You may know the OVERALL gist of a scenario, but aspects of it do swap up.
Obviously Michael has played a lot more of the game than I have, having my single (but awesome, I sneaked it out as the Keeper and it was VERY close) play under the belt, and he is a professional reviewer which I have not been for MANY years, so I can only say it was fun as all get out :).
Mind, I also knew about the errata and replacement stuff before I got my copy. I am used to the nature of Final Fantasy’s releases and, while not perfect, I’d say that MoM was a much better release than, hmm…. Runebound, Arkham Horror, Descent… uh… yeah, FFG needs tighter QC, but I had NO game-breakers or anything.